You Should Know

Unfortunately grass-fed production is no solution. It both does not scale or help reduce emissions

We model a nationwide transition [in the US] from grain- to grass-finishing systems using demographics of present-day beef cattle. In order to produce the same quantity of beef as the present-day system, we find that a nationwide shift to exclusively grass-fed beef would require increasing the national cattle herd from 77 to 100 million cattle, an increase of 30%. We also find that the current pastureland grass resource can support only 27% of the current beef supply (27 million cattle), an amount 30% smaller than prior estimates

[…]

If beef consumption is not reduced and is instead satisfied by greater imports of grass-fed beef, a switch to purely grass-fed systems would likely result in higher environmental costs, including higher overall methane emissions. Thus, only reductions in beef consumption can guarantee reductions in the environmental impact of US food systems.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aad401

Nope it because politicians need votes from farmers so they continue to give farmers corn subsidies cos they lose votes if they take away the subsidies they where given decades ago.

In Australia most of our beef is grass fed. Not only is it cheaper (when u don't account for the reduced price of subsidised corn) but because much of Australia is so desert like it can only support grass and cattle are the only way to convert that grass to food and profit.

we need to feed them corn and soybeans because people want lots and lots of meat, and that's the best way to get lots and lots of meat.

that's.. kinda why people advocate for eating less meat, so that there won't be such a powerful incentive to turbomaximize meat yields to meet the huge demand..

Well, it's not "growing" per se, but we produce fertilizers which are "plant food", so you could say we grow food for our food even for plants.

why do we need to grow corn and soybeans for them

we don't. but we do grain finish most cattle, because it's faster.

That's a very reasonable and effective individual strategy.

We don't need everyone becoming a vegan - but we absolutely do need to stop denying the necessity of reducing meat consumption.

We should push for large institutional change, but don't ignore individual change either. Problem is how will you get said governments to act if people aren't also stepping up and they expect backlash to acting? The more people expect it to be cheap and highly consumed, the harder it will be for them to act. Moving people away from meat individually makes it easier. Movements that succeed usually have both individual and institutional change

Institutional change that is achievable at the current moment is smaller. There's been some success with things like changing the defaults to be plant-based (which is good and we should continuing to push for that), but cutting subsides is going to be an uphill battle until a larger number of people change their consumption patterns

If it’s any consolation, at least a kilo of coffee is many more servings than a kilo of beef.

Same here. I only eat beef a few times a year as a treat both for health and environmental reasons. But coffee and chocolate so high up the list is more of a killer for me. I definitely enjoy a couple cups per day as well as at least one bite of dark chocolate. Probably should cut back now that I can't claim ignorance.

I was surprised it was that high. I don’t ever drink coffee, so hopefully it offsets some of the meat. We have already reduced our consumption.

Fuck your gatekeeping and special pleading

I think it’s also a bit of a thing where most people treat it like a binary.

They either think you have to go full on vegetarian or you eat meat.

When what we should really be encouraging most people to do is cut down on meat. (You’re gonna have a lot less sucess if you ask them to straight up stop).

I eat meat and it has very little impact. I hunt.

That's what they are saying, yes. They are wrong.